


The Way They Loved

by ssrhpurgatory



Series: The Way They Lived (and related works) [2]
Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Making Out, Porn With Plot, also some
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-30
Updated: 2019-10-30
Packaged: 2021-01-15 04:13:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 7,874
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21247292
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ssrhpurgatory/pseuds/ssrhpurgatory
Summary: Snippets from Rosemary's perspective in The Way They Lived.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [The Way They Lived](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20369032) by [ssrhpurgatory](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ssrhpurgatory/pseuds/ssrhpurgatory). 
**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Follows Chapter 4 of [The Way They Lived](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20369032/chapters/48434015)

The constant booming of the campus firework show had ended, though there were still occasional distant crackles and the occasional percussive explosion. No doubt some of those hooligans from the Engineering department setting off fireworks of their own. But at least Alexander seemed calmer now.

“I’m going to go get ready for bed,” Rosemary said, loosening the tight hold she had wrapped Alexander in. He sat back onto the bathroom floor—on her bath mat—and gave her a sheepish look. “Could I run over to your apartment and get you some pajamas...?”

“I, ah, sleep in underwear,” he said, blushing.

“I’ll give you one of my t-shirts, then.”

She went straight to her bedroom, pulling a pair of shorts and two of the oversized shirts she used as nightshirts out of a drawer, along with one of the old, broken-down bras she wore at night to keep her chest from strangling her in her sleep. Normally she wouldn’t wear so much clothing to bed in the summer... but with Alexander staying the night, even for something so platonic as just being held, she needed just a little bit of armor.

He looked up at her with bleary eyes when she returned to the bathroom and offered him the shirt she wasn’t wearing. “Here. Get yourself changed, and give me a yell if you need me. I’ll be in the bedroom.”

“Thank you,” he responded in a voice that was barely there, looking as if he were about to cry again.

“Do you need help...?”

He blushed again. He blushed so easily. “No, I... I will be fine.”

Rosemary nodded and left him there before returning to the bedroom and taking care of her own routine, removing her wig and swiping roughly at her face with a wipe to remove what little makeup she hadn’t sweated off over the course of the evening. A few minutes after she finished, she finally heard the sound of the water turning off. She poked her head out the door of her bedroom just in time to see Alexander emerge from the bathroom, completely swamped in a shirt that would have only been somewhat large on her.

There was the distant crack of a firework, and he flinched and started trembling. Rosemary took him by the arm and lead him into her bedroom, maneuvering him gently down onto her bed, where he lay, shivering.

“May I?” She reached carefully for his glasses, and he gained enough control over his body to give her a small nod. And then, his glasses safely on her bedside table, she turned out the light and clambered into the bed at Alexander’s side, sliding one arm carefully beneath his neck and wrapping the other around his shoulders in order to hold him.

She felt strangely nervous, laying there in the dark of her bedroom with this man at her side. Not nervous that he would try anything improper—not that she would reject any such overtures if they came—but because she knew that he wouldn’t.

For the first time in her life, she had another person in her bed in a context that had nothing to do with sex, and she was terrified.

Alexander’s shivering had slowed somewhat, though he still twitched at every distant crack and bang.

“Rosemary?” Alexander’s breath was soft against her neck.

“Mm?”

“Why did you decide to trust me?”

She didn’t know how to answer that question. She didn’t understand it herself. It was simply that he had shown up and had told his ridiculous story and had... and had known her.

And maybe, just a little, it had been the look in his eyes when he had seen her. Surprise, desperation, longing... and trust, complete and absolute. Not the way she was used to being looked at. But instead of trying to put all of that into words, she shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“Surely there must have been something that kept you from reporting me to Carter.”

She let out a little sigh, and tried to put words to her thoughts, as nonsensical as her reasons were. “You knew me. And you trusted me in spite of that. I guess I... I just wanted to be worthy of that trust somehow.” She snugged her arms a little tighter around him, and he adjusted his body against hers, tucking his head against her shoulder and slowly relaxing in spite of the tremors that still wracked his body every time there was a distant boom.

“You were always worthy of that trust,” he murmured sleepily, his voice muffled by her shoulder and the fabric of her shirt.

“You know I’m not.”

“You have not yet betrayed me to Carter,” he said, lifting his head a bit so that they were nose-to-nose.

“How do you know I haven’t? That we’re not just biding our time until I can get all the information out of you that you have to give?” She knew she was arguing for the sake of arguing now... and Alexander seemed to know too. He let out a disbelieving snort and shook his head, the tip of his nose brushing hers.

“You are ridiculous woman,” he said, his Russian accent very strong.

“Really, though. Why did you decide to trust _me_ of all people?”

There was a silence, and then a warm sigh of breath against her cheek. “I think you have always wanted to be valued,” he said softly, “So I simply hoped that being indispensable to me would be enough.” He tucked his head back down against her shoulder at that, and a few minutes later began snoring roughly, his body obviously having reached a point of exhaustion now that the adrenaline had worn off.

That night, sleep eluded Rosemary entirely.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Followed by Chapter 5 of [The Way They Lived](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20369032/chapters/48454313)


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Follows [Chapter 5 of The Way They Lived.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20369032/chapters/48454313)

“We never even did that, did we?” Rosemary found herself looking up at Alexander, strangely miserable all of a sudden. His sudden kiss had startled her, and not just because she had assumed by now that the damn man was asexual, for all she had just claimed to Carter’s face that she was fucking Alexander senseless in his office multiple times a week. But more than that... more than that was the fact that she hadn’t let someone kiss her on the mouth on purpose in well more than three decades, and here this man was, just doing it, right out in the open where anyone could see them.

She hadn’t quite formed an opinion of the kiss itself yet. It had gone on for quite some time, and she supposed it had been pleasant enough... but, well, she didn’t have a lot of kisses to compare it to, and she wasn’t entirely certain that this wasn’t just a particularly vivid dream. Not that she cared to repeat the experiment, even if he offered.

He was looking down at her with a strange expression on his face, worried and elated and hopeful all at once. “Once,” he said in a quiet voice, answering the question she’d almost forgotten she’d asked, lost in the confused whirl of her thoughts.

There was a wealth of meaning in that word. That was a tone of voice that spoke of a deathbed confession, if a confession happened at all. Of a kiss that she might not have been there for. He looked halfway to tears, lines of strain gathering on his face, betraying his age—his true age, not the age of this body he inhabited, but the age of the person who inhabited it. Alexander Hilbert had already lived some twenty-five years beyond this day, and for a moment, his face showed it.

“May I kiss you again?” he asked.

Rosemary tried to say the words she meant to say, tried to decline his offer. Instead she found herself nodding and throwing her arms around his neck as he reached for her, pulling him eagerly down against her.

It was like kissing for the very first time. Well, it might as well have been; she had spent far more of her life not kissing people than she had spent kissing them, and she rather suspected she needed practice. But if she needed practice, she rather thought that the man who was kissing her did as well, and for right now they seemed to be getting on reasonably well with the business despite their mutual lack of practice.

They broke apart eventually, both of them short of breath, Alexander's glasses fogged over from the cool humidity of the day. He removed them and cleaned them on his shirt, clearing his throat a bit awkwardly, opening and closing his mouth a few times as if trying to think of something to say, but nothing came out of his mouth.

"We should get back to work," Rosemary said hesitantly.

Alexander nodded, a careful, cautious nod. "Yes."

Rosemary turned away.

"Rosemary?"

She glanced back over her shoulder at him. He was staring at her wide-eyed and anxious.

"I... I should tell you..."

"Tell me?"

But Alexander seemed to change his mind. "It does not matter."

Rosemary suspected it mattered very much, but she wasn’t quite ready to push him on the subject.

Not right now, at least.

She spent the rest of her day in a vague, dreamy state, breaking out of it from time to time for just long enough to berate herself for being a fool and then falling straight back into her daydreaming.

And then, to her surprise, she spent the rest of the week that way. Not that Alexander seemed to be in any hurry to kiss her again. And not that she was in any hurry to encourage him to. She didn’t have time for that type of thing in her life.

She kept thinking about it anyway.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Followed by [Chapter 6 of The Way They Lived](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20369032/chapters/49193396#workskin)


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rosemary has decided to get married to Alexander. Her friends have some thoughts on the subject.
> 
> Follows [chapter 7 of The Way They Lived.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20369032/chapters/49368332#workskin)

It was one thing to tell Alexander she wanted to marry him.

It was another thing entirely to tell her oldest friends what she intended to do.

She had tackled Adriane first, expecting the stubborn archivist to protest this action the most. What she hadn’t expected at all from Adriane was almost immediate acceptance.

“Alexander has asked me to marry him.”

“And?”

“And I said yes.”

An almost imperceptable frown creased Adriane’s brow. “This is to help with his case for adopting the Eiffel child, yes?”

“Yes.”

Adriane got up from behind her desk and came to Rosemary’s side to lay a hand on her shoulder, and said only this: “You do not have to do this, Rosmarin.”

Rosemary took a deep breath and looked up at her friend, not bothering to cloak her face in one of the smiles that came so easily to her. “I know, but I _want_ to.”

That little frown turned into a smile that creased the corners of Adriane’s eyes, an expression so foreign to the woman that Rosemary didn’t know how to react. “Then invite me to the wedding.”

“Adriane!”

“I mean it. I want to be there.”

“I thought I’d have to fight you on this.”

Adriane shook her head. “I think I have seen this coming since the afternoon you showed up in my office with that man, claiming he was from the future.” Adriane went back to her seat, safe behind her desk, and Rosemary continued to gape at her all the while.

Rosemary didn’t know when the last time Adriane had left the campus of Goddard Futuristics was. Hell, she couldn’t recall ever seeing Adriane beneath an open sky. “Are you sure?” she asked creakily. “That you want to come to the wedding,” she clarified at Adriane’s infinitesimally raised eyebrow. “It most likely won’t be anything special. Just the two of us and some witnesses in town hall.”

“Then I insist on being a witness.”

This was too much for Rosemary. Too many unexpected events in a short duration; Alexander’s proposal that she marry him, complete with the implication that it wasn’t just because it would make his case to adopt Doug easier, Carter approving her request to take over the xenobiology lab, the complete lack of resistance—with the exception of Yasmin Solomon—to the idea of Rosemary joining their ranks from the scientists who had so often treated Rosemary as if she were just the staff. Rosemary burst into tears, barely noticing when Adriane got to her feet and left her office, returning with a box of tissues.

“Oh. Thank you. Where did these come from?” Rosemary grabbed a handful from the box, blowing her nose and dabbing at her cheeks, hoping that this mascara really was as waterproof as it had claimed to be.

“Florence has allergies. They plague her even in here, with the best air filtration known to mankind,” Adriane said drily.

“I’ll have to thank her too, then.” Rosemary finished dabbing at her face and got to her feet, plucking the tissue box out of Adriane’s hands and placing it on her abandoned chair. “I’m going to hug you now, if that’s all right.”

Adriane seemed to be considering it. “I will accept a hug for thirty seconds.”

“Come here, then.”

Adriane allowed her a full minute.

Al was another matter entirely.

“I just don’t trust the man,” he said, frowning down at Rosemary. “I know you like him well enough, but he can’t possibly be _that_ good in bed.”

“Al. Please.” Rosemary thumped him lightly on the arm with a closed fist.

“It’s not that I’m not grateful to him for bringing Janie and Sam to my attention. It’s just...” Al sighed.

“Are you jealous, darling?”

Al froze for a moment, and then sighed. “Might be, at that. Always thought that if I ever were to marry someone, it would be you.”

“You know I never would, don’t you?” Rosemary looked up at him with a frown. “You’ll always need your freedom, and I’m fine with that when it’s just us playing together, but...”

Al sighed and took her hand. “Yeah, darlin’, I know.”

“I didn’t even have sex with anyone until the divorce with Ric went through, and you know that wasn’t even a real marriage. I just couldn’t bring myself to...” To abandon vows she’d taken, even if they were to a man who she had married in full knowledge that he was already committed elsewhere. Not after she had been seduced by a married man who was never going to divorce his wife and make the child she had been pregnant with his own.

“I know, Rosie. You’d have wanted fidelity, and I’ll never be the person to give you that.”

“More that I’d never have the heart to stray on you, even if I gave you full freedom, and that seems awfully unfair.”

“What makes you so sure this fellow’s going to treat you right?” Al frowned. “We can verify his past in Russia. But... there’s no way to verify his future. He might have proven that’s where he’s from, but that says nothing about his character. Not really.”

Rosemary chewed absentmindedly on her lower lip as she considered. Why was she so certain she wished to do this? “He told me I’m indispensable to him,” she said quietly, remembering months ago, what he had told her that first night he had spent in her bed, just being held. “He knows Carter. Knows what Carter’s like, and knows I report to him. And despite all of that, Alexander’s first instinct was to trust me.” Rosemary felt tears threatening and bit hard into her lip, staving them off. “He came here and he trusted me, despite the fact that he should have had every reason to believe I’d sell him out to Carter, first chance I got.” She looked up at Al, eyes brimming with tears now. “How could I not trust him in return?”

Al still looked conflicted, but he sighed and shook his head, and his face cleared. “All right, Rosie. All right. I’ll accept it. But I’ll be keeping a closer eye on that boy from here on out.”

“You wouldn’t be you if you didn’t.” Rosemary dove for the tissue box that was on a side table next to her couch and dabbed this set of tears away. “Want to be a witness?”

“Sure thing. You need two, right? Want me to ask Janie?”

“She and Sam are welcome to come if they’d like, but Adriane’s already filling that role.”

Al let out a low whistle of surprise. “Hell. I can’t remember when she even last left the archives.”

“You either?”

They both laughed at that, relieving some of the awkward tension that had grown between them.

“How are you going to tell Carter?” Al asked when their chuckles had finally died down.

“I don’t see that it’s any of his business.”

“You know he’ll make it his business.” The way he’d made Janie and Sam his business when he’d discovered them, was Al’s unspoken warning. “This isn’t exactly usual behavior for you, this getting married thing. And if you’re bringing a child into it...”

Rosemary took a deep breath and released it with a sigh. “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. And as far as informing Carter of my marriage goes...” she smiled impishly up at Al. “What do you think of me just waltzing into his office once the deed is done and plopping the marriage certificate on his desk?”

Al blanched and shut his eyes, looking a little ill at the thought. “A bit bold even for you, Rosie.”

“Ah, well, I’ll just let him figure it out when I add Alexander as a beneficiary of my 401k. You know Carter loves snooping through the paperwork.”

Al shook his head and sighed. “Still think he’s going to kick up a fuss. That man’s not used to folks making changes in their lives he didn’t anticipate.”

“Well then, Carter will just have to learn to cope with it, because he’s going to be getting a lot of that from me for the next little while,” Rosemary said firmly, wishing she felt as certain as she sounded.

“I’m sure he will.” Al sounded as dubious as she felt. “Now, on to other topics. You make that appointment yet?”

“They can’t get me in for another month.”

Al frowned. “Did you tell them the right thing?”

Rosemary sighed and rolled her eyes. “Yes, Al, I told them there was a family history. But they said that if there wasn’t any immediate concern, that was the best they could do, and it’s not like I’ve got any unusual lumps or anything.”

“Still...”

“I don’t get a diagnosis for another five years in the timeline he came from. And it’s not like I actually do have a family history of cancer.”

“I just want you to be careful, darlin’.” Al wrapped his arm around her shoulders. “Especially with you so intent on making all these changes.”

“And I will be. I promise. But I don’t think a month’s going to be the difference between life and death, not this far out.”

“I hope you’re right.”

“Of course I am.” And she tried to feel certain of that, too.

This wedding was very much like her first one, in some respects. Her and her husband-to-be, standing in front of a justice of the peace, a pair of friends standing by to serve as witness.

Of course, this time it wasn’t entirely a marriage of convenience. Or at least, she had to hope that it wasn’t. Alexander had certainly seemed very intent on making her aware that he was interested in her as a person.

Very, very intent.

And this time she wasn’t four months pregnant, trying not to puke on her husband-to-be, wearing a dress that had once been her Sunday best and that hadn’t fit properly for months. This time, she was wearing a suit tailored perfectly to her form, and a little pillbox hat with a great swathe of netting that she had gotten to lay perfectly over her wig, partly veiling her face, a concession to wanting to feel a little bit like a bride.

Al had insisted on being the one to drive Alexander to town hall. “Bad luck for the groom to see the bride before the wedding,” he had said, but Rosemary wondered, just a little, if Al intended to have some kind of little talk with Alexander along the way. Of course, Rosemary found herself hard pressed to worry overmuch about her husband-to-be; she had Adriane in her car, and the archivist had been pale and shaking since Rosemary had pulled up to the well-hidden loading dock attached to the archives and had gone in to escort Adriane out.

“You all right, Liebchen?”

Adriane made a small noise and shut her eyes, and Rosemary chose not to comment.

Fortunately, Adriane improved the moment she was back under a roof again, color returning to her face, though her gloved hand was still clinging tightly to Rosemary’s, a grip she only relaxed when Al arrived with Alexander in tow.

Rosemary only had eyes for Alexander. Al had apparently felt it necessary to drag the other man out suit shopping and to a tailor some time over the past few weeks; the three-piece suit Alexander was wearing was a rich blue and fit him exquisitely. She dragged her eyes away from him long enough to catch Al’s gaze and raise her eyebrows approvingly.

Al smiled, a wry little smile, and nodded, and she knew that whatever worries he’d had about Alexander had been dealt with.

When she turned back to Alexander he was smiling at her too, a soft little smile that crinkled the corners of his eyes into a handsome web of wrinkles, a smile that left her feeling as if she were the most beautiful woman on earth.

And maybe, just maybe, for today she was.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Followed directly by the next chapter of this.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rosemary tries to figure out what she wants from this marriage and has an irritating encounter with Carter. Follows the previous chapter, comes before [Chapter 8 of The Way They Lived.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20369032/chapters/49575302#workskin)

Rosemary withdrew from Alexander after their wedding. She would not have been able to bear it, otherwise.

Oh, she let him in to her apartment when he knocked, consulted with him on their plans for a home and their plans for Doug, met with him each morning and walked in to the lab building together because some days they were too busy to see one another any other way. But she could have suggested that he move in to her apartment until the house was ready, and she had not.

It had something to do with that melting warmth she’d felt, seeing him in that suit, smiling down at her. It had something to do with the thought that maybe, just maybe, someone else might be choosing her first. But she knew better than that. Even if Alexander had not been pouring all of his spare time into saving the children who had, in his other life, grown up to be his crew mates, well...

It was Decima. She had guessed from the reports that she had gotten on him that it was his life’s work. And it still was, despite what he clearly saw as devastating setbacks, the loss of two and a half decades worth of work. It seemed that every conversation they had that was not about the children was about Decima, and she could not blame him. The damn man was a true believer, and that retrovirus was wife, child, and religion to him. He had no space in his life to make a proper wife of her, and she wasn’t going to ask him to.

But some days it was very, very hard.

“I will see you this evening for dinner?”

“If I can get away from the lab at a reasonable time,” Rosemary responded, knowing the real limitation would be whether he could tear himself away from his own work. Between the work he was doing for the summer program and a Decima trial that was having promising results where this current batch of lab rats was concerned, Alexander hadn’t left the lab at a reasonable hour all week.

“Good. Good.” His response was distracted and distant, and Rosemary tried not to mind the feeling that he hadn’t been listening to her at all.

“You know, I’ve got to head over to the archives to get some notes from Adriane,” she said, pasting a smile on her face. “So I’ll leave you here.”

At that he seemed to finally be paying attention, and suddenly his hand was beneath her elbow, tugging her around a corner and behind a bush. He turned towards her and chucked his free hand beneath her chin, and when she tilted her head back in response...

“I have missed you this week,” he said softly, breaking the kiss he had pulled her into. “I was hoping...” his full attention was on her now, his eyes studying her face intently. “I may spend the night tonight? If I am not too late?”

Rosemary nodded, too breathless to respond any other way.

“Very good,” Alexander said, and then suddenly there was once more a very correct distance between them as he took a swift step backwards. “Go to archives. I will see you tonight.” He looked her up and down, his usually dour expression replaced by one with a good deal of heat to it. “I promise,” he growled.

Well, then. He might actually keep that promise. “If you’re not back by midnight...”

“You turn into pumpkin?” he asked, a smile flashing across his face.

“I’m certainly round enough to be one,” Rosemary said with a smile, wondering when and how on earth he’d added a reference to Cinderella in his vocabulary.

Alexander lifted his chin, gesturing her onward. “Go. I will be there.”

“All right. I’ll hold you to that.” And without a look back, Rosemary negotiated her way around him and on to the path that lead to the archives.

It was a nice day, thank goodness. They had been dealing with a rash of thunderstorms lately, but today the sky was clear and the air even had enough of a late spring chill in it that she wasn’t too warm in her usual suit. That, and the warm internal glow Alexander’s kiss had left her with, had her dawdling along her way to the archives.

“Canoodling in public, Rosemary? How... unlike you.”

A shiver went down her spine at the sound of William Carter’s voice. “I wouldn’t exactly call it canoodling,” she said in a voice that was calmer than she felt, turning slightly to acknowledge Carter as he came up beside her. “And even if it were, I can see as how it would be any of your business what goes on between me and my husband.”

Carter smiled at that, a thin, dangerous smile. “And how, exactly, did that come about, my dear? I thought you’d sworn off marriage for life.”

“He asked me.”

“The man’s impotent, Rosemary, the sex can’t possibly be that good.” Carter’s voice was brisk and dismissive, and he brushed an invisible piece of lint off of his shoulder as he spoke, a broad, theatrical gesture meant to draw the eye that she had seen him use time and again when he wanted someone’s full attention as he spoke. “Why did you marry him?”

“I felt like it.”

“That’s not a good reason.”

Rosemary ground to a halt, forcing Carter to stop as well. He turned and looked down at her, an intent expression on his face.

She raised an eyebrow deliberately. “You’re not my father, sir.”

He looked affronted at that. “I had hoped that I was at least family by now. Isn’t that what we are here? One big, happy family?”

“You’re assuming I was happy.” And oh, what a time to realize that she hadn’t been, not for years. She had known how to give an outward impression of nothing being amiss, but inside...

Inside she had been lonely. Terribly, desperately lonely, in spite of Al and Adriane offering her what friendship they were able. And for all that Alexander was barely at her side, when he was there, he made that loneliness easier to bear, just a little.

She wondered if some of this had slipped past her mask and on to her face; Carter was studying her just as intently as Alexander had been earlier.

“He’s not going to change for you, Rosemary.”

Oh, those words cut her to the quick, for all she knew the truth of them. “I never expected him to.”

“So why?”

“Why not?” she asked irritably, brushing past him as she started on her way once more.

“You always have a reason for everything you do, my dear.” Carter fell in at her side again, keeping pace with her.

“Not this time.”

“Oh, good lord. You’re making me think you’re in love with the man.”

Rosemary opened her mouth to respond, but no sound came out.

There was a breathless laugh from Carter. “You really are, aren’t you. _Rosemary_.”

She found her voice at that, bristling a bit at his judgmental tone. “If I’m being a fool about the man, that’s my business, William.”

“I simply can’t understand how it happened. You were so settled.”

And she had desperately needed Alexander to come along and unsettle her, but she wasn’t going to tell Carter that. “There’s no logic to falling in love.”

And absolutely no logic at all here. She knew Alexander would fail her again and again, that she would never come first for him. But there was a settled sort of acceptance that came with that knowledge. He might fail her, might never put her first... but his failures would never be a disappointment, because in that, at least, she had gone into this arrangement with a clear head.

“Well, just let me know if you want me to rearrange his priorities for him. I can have him off the Decima project, lickety-split.” Carter emphasized the last two words with a snap, and Rosemary felt another chill.

“That won’t be necessary, sir,” she said in a cold, tight voice. “I like his priorities where they are.”

“Still.” Carter’s smile was wider now, and that worried her. “Do let me know.”

“I will.” Rosemary smiled suddenly, reminded of the best way to deflect where William Carter was concerned. “But you don’t have to worry about me. The man speaks five languages. With a talented tongue like that at my bidding, I can assure you of one thing: the sex really is that good.”

Carter made a face. “Please, Rosemary. The less said about what goes on in your bedroom, the better.”

“Why, the other night—“

Carter held his hands up in defeat. “You’ve won. I’m going.”

Rosemary opened her eyes very wide and innocent. “You don’t want to come to the archive with me and say hello to Adriane?”

Carter visibly shuddered at that and turned away, calling “I’m gone!” back at her as he fled in the direction of the administrative buildings.

Rosemary managed to hold herself together long enough to get to Adriane’s office, where she collapsed into a chair.

Adriane raised an eyebrow infinitesimally. “I would ask if it has been a long day, but as it is only, hm—“ she made a show of checking the time on her computer screen, “—eight thirty-two a.m., I can only assume that you had some kind of unexpected and unwanted encounter on your way here.” She shuffled through the papers on her desk, locating a file folder and offering it to Rosemary. “Pryce or Carter?”

“Carter. He wanted to have a word with me about my recent change in domestic arrangements.” She took the file and flipped just far enough in to find the latest piece of correspondence from the home Doug Eiffel was in, hidden between reams of old notes that belonged to Eber Weiss. “I think I threw him off the scent for now,” she said absentmindedly as she scanned the letter, committing its contents to memory, “but he’s definitely going to have some more questions in a month or two.”

“Indeed.” Adriane cleared her throat. “I have produced the other documentation.”

And Rosemary had just found it in the file, a few pages beyond the letter. A family tree declaring Doug Eiffel a descendant of a distant cousin of one Dmitri Vologin, supporting documentation and all, everything necessary to link the boy to the name Alexander had been born with. “You really are a miracle worker, liebchen.”

“I do not know if it will stand up to strict scrutiny,” Adriane said calmly. “But I’ve planted enough to make it plausible on the surface of the thing, and that should be enough.”

“I just hope Carter will buy the claim that Karl was so desperate for family that he asked you to look into it for him.” Tying Alexander’s current day alias—Karl Kelley—to Doug Eiffel had been enough to give Alexander a claim on the boy, at least in the eyes of the group home that Doug lived in; this second set of paperwork would hopefully answer Carter’s question of why this child, when inevitably he asked it.

Adriane shrugged. “It is certainly plausible, given what we knew of his life in Russia. Every close relation he had was wiped out by the Volgograd disaster.”

Not just his parents, his brothers and sisters—and Dmitri Vologin had been the youngest of seven, same as Al—but every first and second cousin and even third cousin, too. Dead from radiation poisoning, or dead from the war that had ended the year Dmitri Vologin had been born. Alexander had needed to traverse the world all alone, and that dead family had become the force that drove him.

She wondered what he might have become, if the Volgograd meltdown had never happened. Would a Dmitri Vologin, whole and hale, have had space for her in his heart?

“Do you need anything else, Rosmarin?” Adriane was giving her a strange, searching look, and Rosemary sprang to her feet.

“Nothing at all, thank you.”

If only she were certain that her heart would continue to accept that nothing at all was everything she deserved.

That night, when she returned to the apartments after a long and very frustrating day of trying to make sense of some of the samples that had been sent back from one of Goddard’s planetary outposts, she paused in the hallway outside of Alexander’s apartment, listening. And there it was again—the soft hiss of his kitchen faucet turning on for a moment, heard through the wall. Before she could think better of it, she knocked at his door.

Alexander smiled down at her when he opened his door to find her there. “Rosemary. Come in.”

“I don’t want to bother you...”

“Nonsense.” He stepped back, making space for her to follow him into his apartment. “I am cooking. You can help.” The last was said with a wry little twist of a grin on his face, an acknowledgement of Rosemary’s lack of skill in that area.

“I can chop things, if you have things that need chopping.” She stepped past him, into his apartment, and he locked the door behind them both. “But more than that...”

He caught her arm before she could go any further and swung her around against the wall in his apartment’s entry hall, taking her face in both hands and pulling her into a kiss, his mouth warm and gentle against hers. “Better,” he said in a low, raspy voice when they finally broke apart.

“Better?” Rosemary asked breathlessly.

“I missed you.”

Rosemary laughed. “You see me every day.”

Alexander’s thumb rubbed gently across her cheekbone. “I do not kiss you every day.”

She gave him a bemused look. “And you want to?”

He sighed and pressed a kiss to her temple. “Would have to schedule you in.” He stepped back, a look of chagrin on his face. “Left early from curriculum meeting to make this work.”

“_Dmitri_.”

“I wanted to.” He smiled briefly down at her. “Could tell they wanted to talk about me behind back.”

He turned towards the kitchen and she followed him. “Why would they want to do that?”

He laughed. “You and I have become... what is phrase. When someone does something so outrageous everyone is talking about them?”

“Seven-day wonder?”

He gestured her way with the wooden spoon he had picked up before using it to stir something that was bubbling gently in a pot on his stove. “Yes.”

“What makes you think that?”

“Ah, hm.” He set the spoon aside and grabbed a cutting board, using a knife to shove the assortment of vegetables the cutting board had held into the pot. “At start of meeting, everyone looked at me with big, round eyes, and then they asked if rumors were true.”

“Rumors?” Rosemary glanced into the pot, which appeared to hold some kind of sausage stew that smelled delicious. “Did they clarify?”

Alexander had set the cutting board down by now, and tucked her against his side with his free hand as he picked up the spoon in his other to stir the contents of the pot again. “They wanted to know if it was true that Rosemary Epps, of all people, had married me.” There was a low humor to his voice as he spoke. “The room seemed to be split on which one of us was not good enough for the other.”

“Well, I’m not good enough for you, that’s for certain.” She reached into the pot and snagged a chunk of sausage, blowing on it lightly before stuffing it in her mouth. “I take it you revealed the truth?”

“Mm. Their faces as they tried not to ask more questions...” he smacked her on the tips of the fingers with the spoon as she reached back into the pot. “You will burn yourself.”

“I’m hungry. And the nerve endings in my fingertips are pretty dead these days. Too much time spent sterilizing glassware by hand.”

“You can wait five more minutes,” he admonished, releasing his arm from around her waist and pushing her gently away with it. “Go sit at table.”

“Fine...”

“And Rosemary?”

“Hm?”

“You have always been enough for me.” He glanced over at her, swift and piercing. “More than enough. If I have not shown it—“

“It’s fine, darling,” Rosemary said, dismissing his concerns with a wave of her hand.

“If I have not shown it, then it is not fine.” He cleared his throat, staring down into the soup once more. “I know this is not a usual marriage. But I was hoping that we could make partnership of it.”

“We have been partners. Since you got here. No need to try and fix something that isn’t broken.” And Rosemary didn’t know why she was arguing the point. Didn’t she want more from him than these few moments of intimacy they managed to find around the edges?

But then, would she be able to bear it if he gave up something else because of her?

Alexander’s shoulders tensed for a moment, and she wondered if he was working out the same calculation she just had. What might he be able to bear losing, if he took her on instead?

_Nothing_, she wanted to shout at him. _I am not worth you giving up anything_.

Instead, she laughed, and smiled, and ate dinner with her husband. Afterwards, she let him take her to his bed, and just for a little while, she pretended that he could make that choice and still live with himself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Followed by [Chapter 8 of The Way They Lived.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20369032/chapters/49575302#workskin)


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Not really connected to the previous chapter of this, but a cut scene of sorts [from chapter 13 of The Way They Lived](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20369032/chapters/54670801#workskin), showing Rosemary's conversation with Ric.

Rosemary cleared her throat as she stepped up beside her ex-husband, the product of a marriage even emptier than her current one. “Ric.”

“Rosie.” He smiled, half-turning in her direction, his face creasing into a web of lines that had only been hinted at thirty-five years ago. “You look fantastic.”

Rosemary raised an eyebrow. “You look old.”

Ric laughed at that. “I am old.”

“I suppose you are.” She stood there awkwardly, studying his face. “How’s James?”

“Dying,” came Ric’s blunt response.

“I’m sorry.” She swallowed hard. They’d been good to her back then, Ric and James both, and she’d thrown that goodness away, but that didn’t mean she didn’t care.

“I know. Call him?”

“I suppose I’ll have to, if you’re going to layer on the guilt like that.”

They lapsed into an awkward silence.

“And you?” Ric asked. “How are you?”

“Married again.”

“Huh.”

The silence eased a bit.

“A real marriage this time?”

Rosemary let out a crack of laughter. “More childcare arrangements, I’m afraid.”

“Rosie...” Ric set his hand on her arm for a moment and gave her a worried look.

“I can’t seem to help it.” But she could ease that worry a little. “He’s good in bed, at least.”

The worry faded into another smile. “So better than you had it with me, you’re saying.”

“In that one respect, certainly. As for the rest... well, I knew what I was getting into.”

“Better in that way too, sounds like.”

“I knew what it would be like with you, too. It was the only rational decision I could make.”

“You were nineteen and pregnant with a married man’s child. I don’t know that you had the capacity to be rational.”

“Maybe not.” Rosemary swallowed hard. Even now, thinking about those days felt impossible. “Still. I think I did my best with what I had available to me.”

“I suppose you did.” Ric eyed her sidelong. “You want to meet your namesake? She shooed her embarrassing grandpa out so she could introduce herself to her roommates, but I bet she’d let me back in if I brought company.”

“I’m not sure I’ve got any right to.”

“Come meet your granddaughter.” He held his hand out to her.

Rosemary bit her lower lip, hard, suddenly nervous. “Don’t tell her who I am.”

“You’re Aunt Rosie to her. Don’t worry.” He wiggled his fingers at her. “Come on, Rosie. You were always braver than you had any right to be. Don’t turn into a coward on me now.”

Rosemary let out a choked laugh and blinked back the tears that were suddenly threatening.

And then, she took his hand.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A snippet written from a prompt about kissing on Tumblr, from after they move into the house but before they adopt Eiffel, but otherwise not really cemented anywhere in particular in time.

The first time it happened was over breakfast. Alexander got to his feet, muttering something about wanting to get an early start in the lab, pausing half-stooped to brush a kiss against her cheek. A kiss she’d tilted her head back to allow, a small movement without any conscious thought behind it.

He was gone before she could think how to react to it.

Well. She’d known that marrying the man would result in some blurred boundaries. Marrying him and moving into this house with him and...

Damn, but she was too old for this. Too old to be feeling like this about some damn fool of a man who had gotten it into his head that this time around, he could make things right.

Maybe he could.

The second time it happened, she was in his lab. For no reason, really, except she knew if she brought him lunch he would stop his work long enough to eat with her, and heavens knew the fellow could use more meat on his bones and couldn’t be relied upon to get himself lunch without outside intervention. This time it was a peck to her forehead, as swiftly gone as it had come.

She resented the way she made space for him, the way he did not have to brush the bangs of her wig out of the way, as he once might have needed to before her body had calculated the exact tilt of her head necessary to allow him to press that kiss to her without impediment. A calculation it had made without reference to her mind, which would surely have gainsaid her body’s plotting.

Once she started noticing the kisses, they were everywhere. Had this been happening all along? Had he trained her to respond to some cue she was not aware of, that had her presenting him her cheek to his distracted affections each time he approached?

What was this intimacy, so easily offered and taken?

Could she bear it?

She supposed she must. Her body, certainly, had fit itself to his patterns, had fallen into lockstep with his, the two of them enacting an unconscious dance each time he came near. “I know you,” those kisses said, in words no tongue could speak. “I know you,” her body responded, making space for him where those kisses were needed.

And maybe, in a marriage that had nothing at all to do with love, that knowing would be enough.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A different prompt about kisses from Tumblr, set after Eiffel was adopted and after Rosemary has started her chemo, featuring Hilbert trying to distract her from doing work until all hours of the night as is her wont.

“Come to bed.” Alexander settled down on the couch at her side, glanced down at the paper in her hands. “Surely that is not urgent.”

Everything felt urgent, these days. Oh, every sign pointed to the chemo doing its job, to it killing the cancer faster than it was killing her, but it certainly didn’t feel like that. “I want to get through this while I’ve got the brain for it,” she said out loud, refusing to admit to that inward urgency.

“You will be no use to anyone if you exhaust yourself on pointless tasks,” he lectured, his tone brisk and certain. “Come to bed.”

“Let me finish this section.”

“How long is section?”

She flipped forward to make sure. “Nine pages.”

“Absolutely not. Come to bed.”

“It would go faster if you’d stop pestering me.”

“Rosemary, it is nearly midnight. Come to bed.”

She ignored him and turned her attention back to the paper. From beside her, she heard a sigh, and the sound of Alexander shifting on the couch. For a moment, she hoped that he was about to abandon his crusade, until she felt the weight of his arm settle on the cushion behind her shoulders. And then... and then... “What do you think you’re doing?”

His only answer was another kiss, his lips warm against her neck.

“Alexander!” She swatted ineffectively at him with the hand that held the paper. He dodged out of the way and parried with a kiss to the pulse point below her ear. “Stop that,” she said weakly, as a fourth kiss and then a fifth piled up against her cheek.

“Will you come to bed?” his voice rumbled from very near her ear.

“I have work to do.”

“Then no.” And his lips were on her again, gentle and insistent, a distraction she definitely could not work through.

Well. It had been a few months since she had felt well enough to even consider it, and it might be a few months more before she felt so normal again. She tossed the paper and her pen down on the coffee table and turned to Alexander, raising an eyebrow. “I do hope your body is ready to cash the checks that mouth of yours has been writing.”

He gave her a confused look. “I do not have any idea what that means.”

She grabbed him by the collar of his pajamas and pulled him into a fierce open-mouthed kiss that left him panting and glazed-eyed when finally she released him. “It means I’m ready to go to _bed_, darling.”

He could not get her up the stairs to their bedroom fast enough.


End file.
